A silver halide color photographic material is, after having been exposed, subjected to color development, by which the dye-forming couplers (hereinafter referred to as "couplers") existing in the material are reacted with the oxidized, aromatic primary amine developing agent to form a color image on the material. In general, the color reproduction to be conducted by this method comes into the category of subtractive color photography, in which yellow, magenta and cyan color images which are complementary to blue, green and red, respectively, are formed to reproduce the colors. In general, yellow dye-forming couplers (hereinafter referred to as "yellow couplers") of acylacetamide couplers and malondianilide couplers are used for forming yellow color images, magenta couplers of 5-pyrazolone couplers and pyrazolotriazole couplers are used for forming magenta color images, and cyan couplers of phenol couplers and naphthol couplers are used for forming cyan color images.
By processing silver halide color photographic materials, in general, yellow dyes, magenta dyes and cyan dyes are formed from couplers, such as those mentioned above, in the silver halide emulsion layers sensitive to radiations complementary to the radiations to be absorbed by the dyes or in the layers adjacent to the color-sensitive layers. As the yellow couplers, especially those for forming photographic images, generally employed are acylacetamide couplers such as typically benzoylacetanilide couplers and pivaloylacetanilide couplers. The former generally have a high coupling activity with the oxidation products of aromatic primary amine developing agents during development and the yellow dyes to be formed from them have a large molecular extinction coefficient. Therefore, they are used mainly in color photographic materials for photographing, especially color negative films which are required to have a high sensitivity. The latter form yellow dyes having excellent spectral absorption characteristics and high fastness and are therefore used mainly in color papers and color reversal films.
Recently, it is desired to provide low-priced silver halide color photographic materials by using inexpensive couplers. However, couplers made from low-priced raw materials had drawbacks in that their color-forming properties are poor and, in addition, the cold storage stability of emulsions comprising them is poor since their solubility in high boiling point organic solvents is low. In particular, those having satisfactory color-forming properties have a low solubility in high boiling point organic solvents and therefore their emulsions have poor storage stability, while those having a satisfactorily high solubility in such solvents have poor color-forming properties. In addition, the dyes to be formed from these couplers have insufficient color image fastness. Therefore, the development of couplers of forming dyes with high fastness has been desired.